Guilty as charged of the solar PV, but my aim was to highlight the speckled energy approach of natural gas enhancing penetration of renewables, and to debunk the distorted attacks on an expensive but green enough facility.

But natural gas use supplies <5% of heat input at Ivanpah, while enabling steps that boosted overall output by 170% this year. Without that “speckled” bit of gas at Ivanpah, far more gas would be consumed elsewhere on the grid to compensate.

And all the credible scholarship (e.g., papers by Prof. Benjamin Sovacool) shows fossil fuels to kill >10x as many birds and bats per GWh than renewables. Thanks for helping debunk the canards about the canaries.

What you may not have caught is that just hours after my article appeared, Heartland Institute issued another attack with the retread distortions about the “Shock” caused by Ivanpah Solar CO2:

Ivanpah is reported to have cost $2.2 billion to build. With its capacity of 392 MW, that’s $5.60/Watt. Meanwhile, utility-scale solar PV is about $1.40 - $2.50/Watt, and residential PV below $3.50/Watt. Though solar thermal may achieve higher capacity factors, it has more ongoing costs than PV. Thus, PV is clearly…

Just hours after my article was published, Heartland Institute was at it again aiming to stoke “shock” about Ivanpah’s low CO2 emissions rate:

The “speckled energy” approach of Ivanpah helps it overcome the availability problem you raise. The auxiliary gas enables the turbines to stay operating near peak power most of the daytime, rather than being tripped offline during intermittent clouds. Ivanpah doesn’t aim to provide power at night, when electricity is…

Hybrid car is a good analogy, since that blends gasoline and battery to boost efficiency. The speckled energy approach of Ivanpah yields even more leverage: the <5% of heat input from natural gas enabled the operational improvements that boosted output by 170% in 2015 Q1 vs 2014 Q1.

It’s unclear how much of the concerns about bird deaths result from the alarmist reporting of Fox News, and how much results from lack of awareness that scholarly studies estimate than fossil fuels cause over 10x as many bird and bat deaths per GWh than renewables. See, for example,

Note that its Fox News that has been most virulent and alarmist in stoking outrage about the bird deaths at Ivanpah. For example:

Ivanpah’s “speckled green” approach helps achieve much of what might be desired from storage. The targeted deployment of natural gas keeps Ivanpah operating near peak output at times when intermittent clouds or contrails might otherwise limit output from or shut off the turbines in the three power towers.

Ivanpah's "speckled green" approach of "beige" natural gas boosting "green" solar overcomes much of the intermittency problem in this case. Use of natural gas around sunrise and when intermittent clouds or contrails interrupt production allows Ivanpah's power towers to remain operating, rather than tripping off-line.…

Many power grids are oversupplied at night, when wind output often peaks and demand dips. So I’m not particularly troubled that Ivanpah doesn’t generate at night, as it’s contributing substantially to the grid during the more valuable daytime.

I appreciate your creativity in hypothesizing an even lower emitting approach. But should we really worry about CO2 from Ivanpah at all, when its CO2 emission rate is at least 93% below the national average. More attention should instead be focused on our country’s numerous 1950’s - 1970’s vintage, inefficient and…

Fox News and Heartland Institute seek to sow public outcry against the slight CO2 emission rates of Ivanpah’s “Speckled Green” energy:

Sora, thank you for your thoughtful comments. What’s remarkable at Ivanpah is its use of relatively little natural gas — <5% of heat input — was part of a series of operational improvements that boosted output 170%. That’s an enormous amount of leverage provided by a “Speckled Green” approach — boosting renewables via…